


i won't back down

by chocobos



Category: Shameless (US)
Genre: Briefly Mentioned References to Non-Con, Child Abandonment, Excessive Cursing, He's a clueless father tho, M/M, Mickey is a good father yes, Misunderstandings, Resentment
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-04-29
Updated: 2013-04-29
Packaged: 2017-12-09 22:56:47
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,863
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/778924
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chocobos/pseuds/chocobos
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Svetlana leaves three months after the baby's born.</p>
            </blockquote>





	i won't back down

**Author's Note:**

> I know, I know, I just started a WIP for this fandom, but I read this as a plot bunny on here a week or so ago from the user OkayKaylyn, but I can't reference the post because I believe they took it down? But anyway, the idea gripped me. Pretty violently. It wasn't polite at all, really.
> 
> I'm hoping to update this along with my other WIP once a week, if not more. I _do_ have a bunch of challenge/auction fics to finish as well, though, so if the updates continue to be frequent as I'd like them to be, the chapters themselves may be a little short. I do so apologize about that! I am super excited to continue writing this, though, and I have so many ideas bouncing around in my head.
> 
> For the sake of the story (I don't want this to be _too_ angsty; come on, let's get some happy fic for once) Terry has fucked off somewhere. Maybe he's in prison. Maybe he's dead. Maybe he's just decided he's had enough with his kids and turned his back on them. I'm leaving it up to the reader to decide on that one, at least for now. I tried to keep the albeist and sexist language to a minimum in here, but let me know if you feel like I should warn for it or not. I do not want to offend anyone!
> 
> I hope you guys enjoy this! I see this being about 10 chapters or so, but being as I don't heavily outline every fic until I'm about halfway through it--if even then--that is subject to change at any time!
> 
> Feedback is appreciated, but of course, it's not obligatory.

Svetlana leaves three months after the baby’s born.

Mickey wants to be upset about it. He wants to pick up that disgusting Tibetan vase his mother traded for a hit of crack the summer before she died--he doesn’t think he hates anything more than that fucking vase, really--wants to throw it against the wall and watch the way it’ll shatter against the plaster, wants to take a pride in the way it’ll spread so easily against the floor. He wants to drive his fist through the wall next to it and revel in the pain blistering across his knuckles like a fire. He just _wants_.

He wants to do so many things, most of them, admittedly, are really fucking stupid--not like he’s ever really been known for making Smart Decisions or anything. Mickey knows he’s not exactly the smartest person around, never has been, and it’s never really bothered him too much (his father never cared if he made an A on a test, he only cared about how hard he could punch whoever his sisters aggressor was that week) but it would be stupid, even for him.

As much as he hates his mother, throwing the vase, the last tangible thing they have of her, it’d--

Mickey doesn’t throw the vase, in the end.

He’d just have to pick it up, later, and that’s just another thing on the Long List of Things Mickey Has To Fucking Do.

*

He purchases a shitty, run-down apartment two blocks away from his father’s house for them.

It’s fucking awful. The paint is littered with enough stains that Mickey is not convinced that it wasn't actually a drug house previously and the carpet smells faintly of piss and vomit, but it's enough to get him away from his entitled, meddling family. It gives him  _space_. 

It's not something Mickey has had in abundance before. 

Svetlana hates the way the carpet smells, hates the way the oven smokes whenever she makes one of her mother's famous Russian dishes--that she absolutely does  _not_ share with Mickey; not that he minds, anyway, it all looks fucking disgusting--she can't stand the way the bathroom door doesn't close all of the way and how Mickey can hear her some mornings singing to herself in the shower.

Svetlana hates everything about their life together, and Mickey can't decide if that's because she just hates being away from home or if she hates everything in relation to him. 

(He's willing to bet it's probably a little bit of both.)

*

If Mickey’s honest--he’s rarely honest with anyone but himself, and even then, it’s hard to tell what’s the truth and what’s just a poor excuse for it now--he’s surprised she lasted this long.

She hated the marriage, too, possible more than he did. He could see it in the way she’d refuse to be alone with him, how he’d always sleep on the couch and the bed would be vacant by the time he woke up. In the way she would flinch away from him every time he simply walked into the same room as her, and Mickey didn’t understand it, didn’t even pretend to understand it. He didn’t know why she was so scared of him--okay, maybe he did, maybe she was scared of how scared _he_ was of her.

He didn’t like to think about that though.

Mickey didn't like being scared of anything, let alone of a fucking chick.

*

Truthfully, it makes the marriage more bearable.

He wasn’t disappointing her--they weren’t attached enough to disappoint each other.

It was almost  _civil_.

Nothing in Southside ends like that--nothing _stays_ like that, either--though, so Mickey didn’t even bat an eyelash when it ended.

*

Mickey can feel the mass of anger building at the bottom of his stomach, can feel it tickling at the edges of his resolve; he’s closer some days to losing control than others.

He never does, though.

He has another mouth to feed, now, permanently, because Svetlana fucked off and left the little pink bundle nestled in the rotting second-hand crib they found on the side of a road for him. Mickey’s never been left something quite so important, something so fucking untarnished.

He’s never had something that was so undeniably _his_ before.

So, he can’t afford to be angry.

At least not anymore.

*

Not where his daughter’s concerned, at least.

*

Mickey has never been good with kids--he’s never been good with people in general, though, so that’s probably not saying all that much. If anything at all.

He just doesn’t _get_ them, has never got them, not even when his sister was this warped, ugly pink thing perched in his mother’s arms like she belonged there, like his mother wasn’t going to abandon her for drugs, too; she did, of course she did (if there was one thing the Milkovich’s were good at, it was fucking up or _getting_ fucked up. His mother did both. Spectacularly well.

He’s not bitter about it anymore.

Well, he ignores how bitter he actually is about it.

It’s the same thing; don’t even try to fucking tell him differently).

Mickey doesn’t know what to expect with Emma.

He knows he won’t be any good with her, at least not at first. Babies have always been this otherworldly thing for him and he’s never been comfortable around them. They cry too much and perpetually smell like shit and baby powder and while Mickey doesn’t exactly consider himself a clean person--far from it, most days--that idea doesn’t even begin to interest him.

At all.

He doesn’t like children, if he’s being honest. They’re small and fragile and so easily breakable--they’re the one thing that Mickey would probably feel guilty about hurting, and he’s a fucking _Milkovich_.

They don’t like feeling guilty for anything.

They can’t afford to.

*

Mickey doesn’t like the fluttering in his chest that happens every damn time he looks at his--and she’s solely  _his_ ; fuck Svetlana for leaving him, leaving _them_. She has no ownership over Emma anymore, Mickey’s going to make sure of that, above all else--daughter, doesn’t like when his pulse skyrockets whenever she makes a happy gurgling noise after she practically inhales the bottle he gives her.

He doesn’t like how much he actually loves it.

He hates how the best part of his day begins and ends with Emma, how co-dependent they’ve become. How dependent  _he's_ become.

Mickey’s never been dependent on anyone.

He’s never had the chance, before.

*

Mickey doesn’t tell anyone Svetlana left him, at least not at first.

He doesn’t think it’s anyone’s damn business what the fuck he and the wife get up to--or don’t get up to, for that matter, since they never really did much of anything together. He moved out of his father’s house for a fucking reason. He hated how nosey his siblings were, particularly Mandy, who didn’t know personal boundaries if they punched her right through the skull.

(Mickey had seen her ass more frequently than anyone’s, and that wasn’t something he was even _remotely_ okay with.)

Mandy asks questions, of course she fucking asks questions, because she dives into everything head first and doesn’t even stop to think about who she’s running over in the process, but Mickey manages to avoid her evasive tactics for a good month or so before she catches onto him.

“Where the fuck is Svetlana, Mickey?” Mandy asks.

There’s a party at the Milkovich house (there’s always a party at the Milkovich house, most of them are just silent. And deadly) and usually Mickey would at least be able to convince Svetlana to show up at one, just to keep up appearances. But, she’s been gone for a month now and he hasn’t even heard from her. He didn’t expect to, not really, but it would’ve eased the anxiety building in his chest a little.

What the fuck did he know to do with a three-month-old baby, anyway?

He forces himself not to care, not anymore.

Emma’s strapped to his chest in one of those Carlos-Hangover-Contraption things he saw Zach Galifianakis use in _The Hangover_ and she giggles every time he takes a step--he absolutely does  _not_ find that endearing or adorable. He stole it from the Walmart on the North side of Southside, along with a bunch of other baby supplies he wouldn’t have bought even if he could afford it.

He’s pretty sure it’s strapped in wrong and his biceps and shoulders are killing him, but Emma’s content, falling sleepy against his chest, and Mickey knows if he even attempts to move her it’ll be hell broken loose.

“The fuck you care?” Mickey grunts. His fingers twitch at his side for the pack of smokes he has in his pocket, but he doesn’t reach for them.

Mandy would kill him for smoking so close to the baby.

He'd probably kill himself for it, too.

“You’ve been weird, Mick,” Mandy says, the venom out of her voice. She’s looking at him curiously, at the way his fingers are trembling anxiously against his thigh, how his eyes can’t focus on one particular thing for longer than a few seconds at most, how he keeps raising a shaky finger to thumb at the edges of his bottom lip.

She’d probably think he was on drugs.

Mickey gave those up awhile ago, though.

“I’m a Milkovich.”

They’re all weird. Mandy’s practically the weirdest of them all.

He goes to say as much, because Mickey knows the one way to distract Mandy is to turn the object of conversation back on her, but her eyes light up in realization before he can, and her grip is steel-tight--it fucking _hurts_ \--on the meat of his bicep.

“The bitch left you, didn’t she?”

Mickey doesn’t so much at blink.

“So what if she did? Never needed her anyway.”

“Mick--”

“Don’t,” Mickey spits, because he is so, so not having this talk with his sister of all people. “I never fucking needed her.”

“What about Emma?” Mandy says, gesturing to the bundle snuggled--fucking snuggled, ugh--into his chest. “What does _Emma_ need?”

“Sure as hell don’t need her mother. That’s for sure,” Mickey says, and he’s sure of this.

Emma was always too good for her.

Emma was always too good for _all_ of them.

Mandy looks unsure, probably because Mickey has never owned up to a single responsibility in his life, but he knows she can see the fire of sheer determination lighting up his eyes. He knows that she knows he’ll fucking _try_.

“You’re probably going to kill her,” Mandy muses, taking a swig from her beer.

Mickey laughs, and it’s a scratchy, broken sound. “Probably,” he agrees, because Mickey destroys everything he touches. 

*

He clutches her tighter to his chest, after Mandy turns away.

And if anyone asks why, it’s not because he’s afraid of losing her, too, but because there was a draft in the air, and he didn’t want her to get sick, didn’t want to pick up fucking vomit and deal with her inevitable fever for the next few days. That's all.

**Author's Note:**

> Title taken from the Eminem song of the same name. It's my personal head canon that Mickey is a huge Eminem fan, so.
> 
> Feel free to follow/start up a conversation with me on my tumblr:
> 
> noelfisha.tumblr.com


End file.
